John R. Weisz, Ph.D., ABPP

时间： 2015-03-30 10:30 - 12:30

地点： Wang Kezhen Building 1113

Fifty years of research have produced scores of empirically tested psychotherapies for mental health problems in children and adolescents (referred to here as “youths”). These are called evidence-based psychotherapies (EBPs). Most EBPs are designed to treat single disorders or single problem domains (e.g., depressive disorders). The EBPs have shown respectable effects in randomized controlled efficacy trials in which treatment conditions are designed specifically for research. However, the EBPs have not been as successful when they are compared to usual clinical care with clinically referred youths treated in everyday clinical practice conditions. One reason may be that clinically referred youths are often more complex than the treatments designed to help them. Most youths referred for treatment have multiple problems and disorders, and their treatment needs may change over time during treatment. This challenge may be addressed by flexible, transdiagnostic psychotherapy that can be personalized to fit the needs of each individual youth. One example, the Child STEPs Model, uses a modular treatment protocol derived from the psychotherapy evidence base and guided by decision flowcharts. Navigation through treatment is informed by a web-based system that monitors each youth’s treatment response week-by-week. A multisite randomized controlled trial of this system, applied to youths with anxiety, depression, and conduct problems, showed that Child STEPs outperformed both usual clinical care and standard EBPs, on measures of youth clinical symptoms and diagnosis. Subsequent research examines the performance of this approach in various conditions and contexts. This work may provide a bridge connecting the rich evidence base of clinical science to the complexity of clinically referred youths in everyday treatment settings.

2015-03-30

2015-03-30